Chapter Ninety-One: The Fitness Club -- Mechanical Duel Chamber

After breakfast, I suddenly realized that ever since I had taken leave from the Salvage Management Association, I seemed to have become idle.

All day long, my thoughts churned with Swift Step and Long Shot, with the shriveled, fearsome head of the skeleton mage, and with the surging packs of dire wolves in the Black Wind Forest...

As soon as I finished eating, I felt an overwhelming urge to return at once to the game, as if the gaming pod in my bedroom possessed endless magic, drawing my mind to it at every moment.

Fortunately, my training regimen had continued for many years; it was not something that could be broken by a day or two of immersion in a game.

Leaving Mille Restaurant, I went straight to the residential fitness center.

The exercise equipment in the district was actually quite complete, though it was all of the most ordinary sort; unless one persisted for a long time, it would have no effect at all.

So, ten days after my arrival, the gym added several high-difficulty machines that I had requested—equipment designed to train muscle responsiveness, along with specialized mechanical combat targets.

On the salvage planet, the community fitness room was usually sparsely attended; especially during the day, when countless salvagers finished work and returned to their nests, they preferred to flop back onto the soft beds in their apartments and rest immediately. After long hours in the cockpits of salvage machines, even if they were protected from the cold outside, sitting too long was still deeply uncomfortable.

In the past, I would deliberately come here when no one else was around to train... but now that my biological clock had adjusted, it was even more convenient.

Under the stirring music echoing through the gym, the two-hundred-kilogram heavy bag, together with iron chains as thick as a fist, emitted muffled, thunderous sounds under repeated heavy punches and whipping kicks; the violent vibrations rang with exceptional clarity in this spacious, empty hall!

After a brief warm-up, while my body was still in an extremely excited state, I quickly entered the room where the mechanical combat target was housed.

The mechanical combat target was an intelligent training machine found only in professional boxing gyms and specialized training facilities. Within it were more than a hundred methods of combat, available for the user to choose at will.

If the user wanted to train evasive ability, one could set the machine to enter attack mode at random, with time and attack intensity specified. The mechanical target would try its best to avoid attacks to the head and groin, allowing the user to fight a self-created rival to the fullest extent possible while remaining in a safe environment.

Of course, the user could also attack, while the mechanical target remained in defense and evasion mode, independently selecting tactics for dodging and guarding...

The settings could be refined in detail, even down to the use of various techniques and routines, all of which the mechanical target could reproduce one by one!

In addition, the mechanical combat target possessed a special ability.

During sparring, it could clearly judge, from every point of contact, how much force a person could truly unleash in actual combat—the fastest punching speed, movement speed, and hit rate.

All of these could be analyzed with precision.

...

As fierce collisions rang out from inside the room, astonishing numbers slowly climbed within the heart of the mechanical combat target!

But I had seen these figures many times before; I only kept increasing my speed, increasing the force of my punches and kicks!

At once, the sounds inside the room grew louder and louder, more and more intense!!

...

“He’s here!”

At the shout, several staff members in the monitoring hall on the eleventh floor of the gym were immediately drawn by the massive sounds coming from the mechanical combat room. After recognizing who was inside, the surveillance feed from the room was switched to the large screen in the hall.

With a whoosh, several staff members almost instantly gathered around the front conference table! At the same time, they pulled out paper and pens, their eyes fixed on the numbers pulsing on the heart of the mechanical combat target on the screen.

That level of tacit understanding was truly impressive.

“Two hundred sixty-seven... two hundred seventy-one... two hundred seventy-four!! Damn, this kid is fast today. Did he take something?!”

The man on the left had only just exclaimed when several colleagues beside him shot him a glare.

“Stop talking. Hurry and place your bets!”

“Fine, fine, bet it is. Who’s afraid of who! Whether he’s on something or not, today I’m losing you all blind, heh heh! I’m betting he breaks two hundred eighty kilograms today!”

Just as the glared-at employee spoke, staring at the value that was rapidly approaching two hundred seventy-nine kilograms, he was brimming with confidence.

Before he had even finished, someone nearby looked up with contempt.

“Damn it, do you think we’re stupid? This guy already hit that yesterday. Breaking two hundred eighty today would be nothing. If you’re so capable, bet two hundred eighty-one!”

“Fine, then I’ll bet two hundred eighty-one! One hundred credit points. Damn it, all of you put yours down too!”

Seeing that he had taken the bait, the others revealed sly smiles...

“I’ll bet he can’t break it either.”

“Count me in.”

“...”

Watching these fellows one by one show expressions of having outsmarted him, the man who had staked one hundred credit points on breaking the two-hundred-eighty-one-kilogram barrier immediately went pale.

“All right! You’re setting me up!”

Although the numbers were leaping wildly today, he had only blurted out the bet on two hundred eighty-one in a sudden burst of enthusiasm. Now that they had said it this way, his confidence instantly cooled.

Barely forty-eight hours had passed; for his maximum strength to increase by more than a kilogram? That was simply impossible...

Unfortunately, by now it was too late to regret it. The others were already saying gleefully,

“Well, well, you said it yourself. No taking it back. I’m in for two hundred credit points.”

“I’m betting three hundred! Damn, I still owe A-Ming three hundred from last time; this time I can pay it back perfectly, haha! Kid, just wait to cry.”

“Heh heh, I’m buying my girlfriend a ring tomorrow, and I’m still short by five hundred credit points... then I’ll put in five hundred.”

The monitoring hall erupted at once with one person’s anguished wails and a burst of wicked laughter.

However, a few seconds later, as the number suddenly leaped on the big screen, slowly rising all the way from 280.29 and finally breaking 281 to reach...

An ear-splitting cackling of delight rang out in the hall...

Outside the mechanical combat room of the gym, two girls of about sixteen or seventeen, lightly dressed, were watching Qi Lin battle fiercely with the mechanical target, their lovely eyes flashing with surprise: why had they never seen him here at this time before?